Darkness
by epiphanies
Summary: An Azkaban ficlet:“This place is too dark for you.” “It’s too dark for you too, and we’re still working on getting you out! You’ll get out!” “Won’t.”


**_Darkness_**

**_by : epiphanies_**

* * *

There was a new scent of licorice in the air. He could only suspect it was drifting from the red-haired menace walking toward him, who wore a thick winter cloak and was carrying a cloth bag that was embroidered with two words : _Honeydukes Sweets_.

He hadn't seen her in nearly three years - he'd seen all the others, but not her. They always came through the cell way - the high-security section. There was somebody in the end cell that was blocked off, and they came every few months to sit in front of the glass and stare.

He blew a wisp of longish white-blonde hair out of his eyes and watched her as she approached - he hid in the shadows. He didn't like the idea of her seeing him, not in these horrid black and white robes that were washed in little but re-used soapy water.

She had big brown eyes with enormous eyelashes - he figured had to be enchanted - and wore slimming black robes beneath her travelling cloak. She didn't need to be slimmed - she looked only skin and bone. He wondered if she had a difficult life.

Voices whispered simultaneously as her robes swept past his cell in the dank dungeon.

**_"...leave him alone, he didn't want all that..."_**

**_"...ooh, Potter...you've got yourself a girlfriend..."_**

**_"...Mister Ferret has finally taken his last turn...."_**

"Oh, hello," he heard her say in a soft voice once the footsteps had stopped. He kneeled forward in his rock-hard chair to listen.

"Invociate," she whispered, and he heard the clinking noise of her wand hitting the glass. He knew this was so that the prisoner's voice could be heard through the glass.

"'Lo," the voice grunted in a grudging way. It was a male voice.

"Have you gotten the paper?" she asked, while apparently sitting down on a transfigured stone-turned-chair.

"Not lately," the man grunted.

"I'll leave it with the manager."

"Won't give it to him," Draco muttered when the prisoner was silent. She obviously could not hear him.

"Well... I brought you some things. From work."

"You're working in Hogsmeade now?"

"Yeah... I'm having trouble getting into the Ministry."

"Wonder why," said the voice dully, and he heard her sigh.

"Listen...." she started, but then started speaking in such a low whisper that Draco could not hear her words. It actually sounded like she was... _hissing._

He stood from his seat to look down the row - as far as his vision would carry in the dark - and saw her robes folded on the ground. She was crouching, probably touching the glass.

"No use, you know," said the man suddenly. Draco felt a twinge of familiarity - he knew that voice, knew it from....

"Use in what, Harry?" she was standing again, the pile of robes had disappeared. Draco strained his neck with wide eyes to watch, her brown eyes regarding the prisoner in a strange kind of fondness mixed with pity.

"Use in coming here all the time, Ev."

Ginny didn't speak for a moment, then looked as if she were raising her hand to the glass again. Her eyes were full now. Draco was fascinated.

"You haven't called me that in..." she whispered sadly. Harry sighed.

"You'll just do yourself in by coming," he said, but Draco thought that he couldn't be looking at her, he couldn't, because if he was looking at her then he'd have to be totally heartless... she looked so _sad. _

"That's why you never came before," he continued, "because you knew that this would happen. You'd do....Gin, stop it. You knew that....this place is too dark for you."

"It's too dark for you too, Harry, and we're still working on getting you out! You'll get out!"

"Won't," he protested softly, and Draco heard the thunking noise of his hands pressing against his side of the glass, "I won't, Ginny. I....I won't. I......killed, after all. _I killed._"

"But it was trying to - because of-"

"_But I killed_, Ginny. You'd want me here too, if it had been your family. But it wasn't. Why do you think that she.....that her family..........I took too much from her. She probably wouldn't have come here to visit anyway, we weren't close enough, but had it have been you......"

"Me? Me what? Me who you killed the sister of, by accident, killing the most evil wizard ever born or made?"

"She was a _sister_, Ginevra,_ don't you understand? A sister that I killed, a sister of the first girl I ever-_"

"I know, Harry."

Her voice was cold now.

"I _know_. I probably wouldn't have visited had you have killed Ron or something. But you know, that doesn't mean that you deserve to be locked up in this place full of _Dementors_, which can only make you think about your parents that _you never met _because _the one that killed them, you just killed! Civilians get in the way sometimes, Harry!"_

"Like Cedric?" said Harry roughly, his voice rising, "Like _Sirius_?"

"Cedric and Sirius were murdered purposely by evil wizards. This wasn't purposely, Harry. Silvia Chang died because she was too stupid to get out of the way. You said duck and took your chance. She did too."

Draco heard Harry heave a sigh.

His voice quieter, he said, "You're just hurting both of us by coming here."

Draco could see Ginny back away from Harry, clutching her throat.

"So," she said, her voice breaking, "After all this....after everything......you just say......" she gulped, "Give up?"

He could hear Harry lay down on his cot again and imagined him covering his eyes so that he wouldn't have to watch her.

"Give up," he said softly.

She backed full-into the wall, covering her mouth with one gloved hand. She gave a little gasp of a cry, picked up her bag ran down the wall of cells, not looking back and not stopping at the end to leave the Honeydukes sweets or the newspaper with the manager.

"Just give up," said Harry. She had forgotten to undo the charm.

Draco laid down on his own cot and closed his eyes, seeing the last action flash before him as he did every night. The wand-waving, the pedalling, the swift movement of cloaks in the night. Deadly words and restraining charms. Having to hear his Mother's screams from when she'd been tortured in his childhood so that he would be brave enough to eat his peas, a ritual Lucius had fostered as good parenting from the age of three - and those last words, said in a sing-song voice at the end of the world by a girl with a willow wand and thin arms that wrapped around his neck.

**_"Mister Ferret has finally taken his last turn."_**


End file.
